


Takeout Night

by not_a_baby_unicorn



Series: Florence (Watson) And The Machine, or the strange adventures of a baby [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Angst and Humor, F/M, I lied, Love Confessions, M/M, POV Third Person, Sherlock isn't actually that bad at looking after babies, Slight fluff, by which I mean John goes out and leaves Sherlock with a baby, lots of fluff, so we're back where we started, unfortunately to the wrong person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 02:47:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3751606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_a_baby_unicorn/pseuds/not_a_baby_unicorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I still don't understand why it is so vital for you to be going out tonight." Sherlock interrupted John's external monologue. "And what I do not think you understand is the fact that I am busy. Give her to Mrs. Hudson, I am sure she'll love to look after your child."</p><p>"I'm leaving you with Flo because I trust you more than the whole of England put together. Just don't experiment on her like you did on Molly's cat."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Takeout Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Callasandra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callasandra/gifts).



> Hey guys! Here goes another Florence the baby Watson fic! if you haven't checked out number one, it's part of this series.  
> You don't need to read it to get the storyline of this one, although I would recommend it if you wanted to find out about Flo's middle names. Enjoy!

"...And consider that although you might not need to sleep, she's only eight months old and she does. Remember to give her food at about seven. Call me if anything goes wrong." John placed Florence's baby carrier in front of Sherlock, who was currently lying on the couch, staring at his friend's moving lips. He narrowed his eyes and turned his head towards the slobbering creature in green.

"I still don't understand  _why_ it is so vital for you to be going out tonight." Sherlock interrupted John's external monologue. "And what I do not think you understand is the fact that I am busy. Give her to Mrs. Hudson, I am sure she'll love to look after your child." He looked away, trying to display his complete distaste with the situation. 

John sighed. It might take longer to convince him than he thought before, the drama queen.

"It is 'vital' for me to go out tonight because I have a date with my wife-" (Sherlock scoffed at the thought.) "-and I'm leaving Flo with you because I trust you more than the whole of England put together." He crouched down beside the sofa. "Just promise me one thing."

Sherlock sat up and examined John. "What is it?"

"Please don't experiment on our baby like you did on Molly's cats when she asked you to catsit that one time." He combed his fingers through his hair nervously and smiled at Sherlock, who was regarding him with a puzzling mixture of denial and pride. "I'm pretty sure Sparkle still hides at the very mention of your name."

"Just who names their cat "Sparkle"? Sparkle is an idiotic name for a cat. I was merely putting the animal out of its misery."

"By dyeing it's fur bright orange and seeing how many short-sighted people would believe it was a tiger from a distance? Please don't try to tell me _that_ was case related." John grinned. Lestrade had taken photos and Molly had nearly fainted when Sparkle was returned to her. Sherlock examined his face and made a noise between a childish whine and a disgruntled sigh.

"Alright. I will not experiment on Florence."

"Thanks, Sherlock." He picked up his coat and took out a list of emergency numbers, ignored Sherlock trying to protest, then moved towards Florence to lay a small peck on her forehead. She gurgled and waved a chubby fist at something in the distance. John smiled at Sherlock and all that Sherlock could muster was a weak twitch of the lips before his friend was out of the flat.

He turned to the baby, only now taking in her entire image. 

"So. Florence. It seems as your father has gone on a pointless mock-date with your mother and left me _in loco parentis_. I cannot say I am too happy with this turn of events as I have had no previous experience with babies and therefore cannot claim to be very, ah, good at whatever this is. Parenting is foreign to me, and that is a statement that I do not make about most things in life. I am a consulting detective and a scientist, for God's sake! I know more about dead babies than how to look after a live one, and John knows that!"

 Sherlock picked up the baby cautiously. She was still smiling widely, and now also squealing. Great- his hands were getting quite drenched in saliva and what looked like- was that chocolate? John should know better than to give chocolate to an eight month old child, he thought, shaking his head.  Sherlock examined Florence with a scrutinizing glare. She stopped squealing and instead drooled some more, blowing bubbles.   

"...Do you like science?"

Florence giggled, producing a spoon from nowhere and jabbing him in the cheek.

"We'll take that as a yes."

They moved towards the kitchen, Florence in her baby carrier and singing something in gurgles and high-pitched noises, Sherlock heaving the damned thing and taking care not to tip it. 

The kitchen itself looked like a bomb site; that is to say, if bomb sites featured half-dissected plants, mugs and mugs of cold tea in various states of staleness and pictures of corpses in heart-shaped magnet frames on the fridge. A tattooed severed arm was lying in a bed of kale, surrounded by melted crimson candles like a homemade satanic ritual.

Sherlock decided that this was not the best place for John Watson's child.

"Right. Er, I think my bedroom looks a bit better." He glanced at Flo over his shoulder. She was asleep, much to his relief- and was that surprise? Shouldn't he check again, just to be sure?

Ah. No, she was most definitely awake. That little-

"Florence Sibelius Wolfgang Watson! You utter and complete imp! Don't you know that I am trying to entertain you, and you for one do not appreciate what I am doing!"

She giggled, and reached at him with starfish hands. Sherlock recoiled at the sight.

"Well then. I think we should get you cleaned up first. Bathroom."

As it turned out, baby Watson did not like pig carcasses in the bath. This was one of the few similarities she shared with her father, apart from sandy blonde hair and... Sherlock couldn't quite remember the others but he was sure he made a list one night before going to bed. 

Everybody with a shred of intelligence knows that to clean anything up, you need equipment. This Sherlock did not have, and he would need both hands to carry it anyways. He blew a stray curl out of his eyes.

"Bugger this. Florence, you're going in the bath."

In retrospect, it was quite a decent idea. The sides of the bath were tall and slippery (the pig blood worked wonders) and that would mean that Sherlock would have a means of leaving Flo in a relatively safe environment as he went to get cleaning items. However, things rarely go according to plan. Somehow, it all ended with her crawling through the kitchen, wailing and leaving a trail of blood much like one Sherlock had inspected this morning. Babies were impossible to work with- I mean, _look after_. The rubber gloves wilted in his hands as he raised them above his head in defeat. 

"Alright, alright. Come here before Mrs. Hudson decides to 'pop in' and instead dies of a heart attack. You look hideous; almost as if you're a corpse, you know." Sherlock picked her up and placed her on his lap. She stopped making dying whale noises, instead gurgling happily. He sighed.

"Your dad used to look at a lot of corpses, you know. Still does sometimes. He's often too busy now, what with you and his wife- your mother." Florence quietened down, her tiny fingers clenching around part of Sherlock's wrist and leaving bloody fingerprints."We used to solve cases for a living. He lived here. With me."

He looked down at her for the longest of times, then out of the window at the slowly dying light of Baker Street. Crowds of people were still up, and would be forever. London always had a slightly gothic feel of timelessness and infinity; everyone, yet no-one was rushing in the oncoming twilight dimness of night, nobody had places to be with everybody. The curtains moved, a veil fluttering on the last breath of a spring evening before it lies down to rest. 

"I miss it, sometimes. Sometimes I forget about him for days. No, that's not true; I never do forget about him; John's always somewhere in my mind. He's in every room of my mind palace, he speaks reason when all I hear is madness. My au pair used to say that the voice inside our head is the voice of our soulmate, but I always laughed at her and told her otherwise. The thing about John Watson is that he is in fact that voice. Maybe I am going mad."

Sherlock turned towards the snuffling baby. She stared back at him, brow furrowed and soft mouth wide with surprise. Florence was a chubby little girl, one people in the streets would coo and drool all over and exchange squeals of joy while congratulating the "lucky" parents. She definitely qualified as the mundane 'cute', but what was interesting about her was the colour of her eyes. They weren't blue, but green, an unique sea green flecked with bronze and rust; two diopsides circled with a band of silver, as green as Bunsen flames after adding Barium. The detective hesitated.

"...I wouldn't mind being mad, so long as I still had possession over my intellect. Like Moriarty. On second thoughts, I do not wish to be at all similar to him. They say _homo homini lupus est_ , and I think that's the most truthful sentence you will ever hear in your life, Florence. I think I am too quick to trust certain people. One word of advice: never trust someone who could break your heart. I don't have one.Yes I do, I am yet again lying to a baby. It seems I also possess no shame. And it seems I never follow my own advice, as I trusted your father. As Mycroft would say- you wouldn't want to meet him- 'what does that tell us about your heart?'" 

Florence made a solemn noise and Sherlock nodded in approval. "Very good. Even you have the common sense to dislike him. How that Janine- Janine? Was that her name? I've deleted it by now, no importance any more- seemed to like him, I still do not understand. He's preposterous." She squeezed Sherlock's face and he shot her a glare that could've been the death of at least three people with weak circulation systems.

Sherlock's phone went off, suddenly, out of the blue like a drone; silent, then all at once. He lunged at it, dropping Florence from his lap in the process and reducing her to a wailing pile of hideous green baby clothes, clinging to his leg and wiping snot on his trousers. His first thought was to get her to _move_ , no matter how, but thankfully instincts kicked in before he did. Instead, the detective sat the snivelling girl in John's armchair and picked up the phone. 

"Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective. Don't bother speaking if it's not interesting."

"Sherlock! It's John. Just wanted to check up on you and Florence. I trust you fed her about an hour ago?"

Ah. So that's why she was so fussy.

"Eh... Of course! Who do you take me for? Looking after children is easy! All you have to do is feed them and leave them somewhere so they don't get in the-"

"What do you mean 'leave them'-"

"-I must be going now, John. Have fun with Mary!"

"-Sherlock! Don't hang up on me-"

Florence glared at him from the armchair as if it was his fault that world hunger was in existence. She was doing a pretty good job of guilt-tripping Sherlock Holmes.

"Don't give me that look! I am in the process of making food for you! Now only if the microwave was clean, I can't give you frog intestine-flavoured carrots... Ah! Bunsen burner and tripod always work for me!"

The brunette began to set up on the kitchen table, moving waterlilies and candles out of the way. It didn't take long to get the flame burning bright, and even less time to switch it off 'safety' and onto 'roaring'. A small tripod and disinfected porcelain crucible were placed over the fire, piled high with a mush of carrots and peas. 

The baby did not look convinced, so he forced a smile. That didn't work either. She was pouting, her light curls wild and matted with pig's blood (He'll have to wash that out before John comes home, or he'll have a fit). In short, Florence Watson looked like a very small and quite sulky axe-murderer. 

It wasn't long before Sherlock completely burned the baby food. It wasn't his fault- Florence, although still a crawler, was surprisingly fast and liked to run off. He poked the reddish pulp with a spoon.

"It seems I can't feed you this, and John didn't leave anything else for you except nappies."

Flo nodded solemnly and looked Sherlock in the eye. She then kicked her legs in frustration and fell off the chair, squawking.

"Alright, alright!" He raised his hands once again. "I'll go downstairs to check on Mrs. Hudson. I'm sure she knows more about babies than anyone." Sherlock opened the door. "Stay here and don't touch anything. However fun it might be to play with formaldehyde, it's not a toy."

As it turned out, Mrs. Hudson had nothing interesting to say. She was a childless widow and was far too busy making a fuss over the fact that Sherlock "left a bloody eight-month-old alone in a roomful of weaponry, chemicals and fire" to really be of much help. The way she talked about 221b made it sound as if a nuclear disaster had a child with war and then decided to marry Jeffrey Dahmer.

Talking about marriage, Sherlock had a phone call to make. After all, John said to call him if something happened and a blood-covered, wailing child should qualify as 'something'. 

 

"Children. No wonder parents are so adamant about leaving them alone sometimes."

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys!  
> Thanks for reading! It's truly a pleasure to be writing for such a wonderful audience.  
> Without further ado, I shall depart.  
> Thanks to Callasandra for being truly wonderful, as always.


End file.
